Writers and Pundits Analyze the President -- New York Magazine

Bush on the Couch

Deep Down He Knows
By Ted Sorensen, speechwriter for President Kennedy

I have enough sympathy for anybody in that position that I wouldn’t say he’s mentally deranged: I feel sorry for him. I think he must know that he’s going to go down in history as the most incompetent president since Buchanan. He came to the White House knowing nothing about national and international policy and consequently relied on Washington veterans—who proved to be incompetent ideologues who got him, and the country, into very deep trouble. Now he’s in a hole, and I’m sure he doesn’t know what to do and has that hopeless, helpless feeling.